Brandon Bell, the chairman of the Rhode Island Republican Party, released a statement on Thursday regarding Governor Gina Raimondo’s botched and bungled “Cooler and Warmer” tourism campaign.
RI GOP Statement
The roll out of Rhode Island’s new branding campaign has succeeded in garnering national attention. Unfortunately the attention has been embarrassing. It started with revelations about the use of Icelandic images and the inclusion of erroneous information on the website. Today, we learned that Betsy Wall, the Chief Marketing Officer, who earns a six figure salary to promote Rhode Island, indicated she had no idea about Gaspee Days when she appeared on Gene Valicenti’s show. Meanwhile, we have also been informed that IndieWhip who developed the phrase “Cooler and Warmer” has used the phrase “Cool and Warm” to promote mattresses by BedJet. In response, to this debacle, Governor Gina Raimondo can only criticize the public by saying we need to “get past this persistent negativity” and for everyone to “move on.”
In response, Rhode Island Republican Party Chairman Brandon S. Bell commented: “This branding campaign is an embarrassment. It needs to be scrapped immediately, high paid staff fired and expensive consultant contracts ended before the taxpayers see another dime wasted. Instead of re-branding Rhode Island as Cooler and Warmer, this branding campaign has succeeded in branding Raimondo as Arrogant and Incompetent and re-branding Rhode Island into Rhode Iceland, the nation’s high tech mattress. In hindsight, Raimondo must now realize that she should have used the PR team that fooled Fortune Magazine into listing her as one of the World’s Top 50 Greatest Leaders to promote Rhode Island rather than the crew she assembled that gave us Cooler and Warmer.”
Bell added: “Raimondo needs to understand that the people of Rhode Island will never stop being upset when they see their tax dollars being wasted by politicians who are both Arrogant and Incompetent. Maybe Rhode Island taxpayers will move on, but it probably will require politicians like Raimondo to move on.”
